On ageism and parenting: Why you are never the right age to be a mother

I weighed in on recent conversations regarding age and parenting over at RH Reality Check. While young people face way more stigma for parenting than those in the “older parents” category do–the way to help both those groups succeed is surprisingly similar.

The commonality between the conversation about teen parents and the conversation about older parents is that the solutions which could address the challenges that result are not so different. If we as a society created systems that supported families to a greater extent, taking the pressure off of individuals to provide for their own across the lifespan, we might find ourselves with improved outcomes for kids regardless of their parents age. Rather than trying to convince people, especially women, to give birth in the socially-acceptable and medically-sanctioned 15-year window between college and age 35, why not change the way our society support families, so that whenever the moment for parenting arises, people have the support they need to do it successfully?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2012 at 3:02 pm and is filed under parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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The Radical Doula Guide

About the Author

Miriam Zoila Pérez is a writer and reproductive justice activist. Pérez is currently a columnist at Colorlines, and was also an Editor at Feministing for four years. She trained as a birth doula in 2004 and a full-spectrum doula in 2010.